By Razvan T. Coloja

The iPhone and iPod Touch haven taken the mobile market by storm. Apple's AppStore is full of interesting applications that take advantage of the two devices's capabilities. But what's in there for Linux users? Sadly, GTKPod and Amarok cannot yet transfer files on an iPhone with the 2.x firmware upgrade, but there are other interesting ways your iPhone can interact with your Linux desktop and even servers.

Multimedia

MPoD, for example, can be of great use when you're running a Music Player Daemon (MPD) server to make your music collection available on the network. You can use the iPhone as a remote control for the playlist and comfortably switch songs from your sofa while the daemon runs on a computer in another room. Once you tap on a song, the device connects through Wi-Fi to your MPD server and starts to play it. All you need to do is install the application and enter the connection data in the settings window: the IP address and port for the MPD server and a password to access it.

MPoD offers some interesting choices when it comes to filtering music. You can display only full albums, excluding artists that appear on compilation albums, or use the folder structure as a display to keep music organized by filename instead of ID3 tags. The main interface displays music by artist, album, song name, or by customized playlists.

But not only music servers can be controlled through an iPhone. If you have the MythTV personal video recorder installed, take a look at Remote Remote GH. It's a MythTV remote control application that can connect through Wi-Fi and display your recordings. In features an intuitive user interface that lets you control the MythTV server via a graphical remote displayed on the screen. An open source application that does the same thing is MyMote. In the same way as Remote Remote GH, MyMote can connect to a MythTV back end and display control buttons, helping you retrieve the program guide and set schedules. iPhone users can also try the MythTV for iPhone project, a Web application that can be installed on a MythTV server to allow iPhone and iPod Touch devices to connect to a more graphically compatible front end. You can access a demo from your iPhone for a look at the front end.

You can also control the XBMC media center application through an iPhone. XBMC Remote does for it what MyMote does for MythTV. Just specify the host IP address, a password, and a path to the data, and you'll have access to all your movies, audio files, and podcasts. This iPhone application can also display cover images.

If you happen to own a Linux-based video disk recorder, the ZapperPro universal remote control application can connect to any such device. After you install it, go to the global iPhone settings screen and scroll down until you reach the ZapperPro settings. Enter the hostname or IP address of the VDR device, then start the application. It will allow you to control the hardware by sending SVDRP commands through Telnet to the host running the VDR software and let you browse channels, recordings, and schedules, manage volume control, and access basically any function with the remote recorder.

File sharing

Since Linux applications cannot yet connect to the newest Apple device firmware, the best way to transfer files between Linux and the iPhone is by using the built-in WiFi, EDGE, or 3G connectivity. Both Konqueror and Nautilus support accessing WebDAV shares, and there are a few applications for iPhone that can transform the device into a small filesharing server. Files does just that: it allows you to transfer various types of files between your iPhone and your Linux PC by means of Wi-Fi. It can also read PDF, XLS, and DOC files, so saving your work at the office and transporting it home should be easy. You can even view them on the device's screen while in traffic. The lite version of the application is free but has a 200MB file limit.

Another such application is Air Sharing. It works on the same filesharing principle, is compatible with GNOME and KDE applications that support WebDAV, and can also view numerous filetypes, including high-resolution images. It even displays source code files with color-coded formatting. You can access the files stored on the iPhone using a Web browser or a file manager. In Firefox just type the device's IP address and add the 8080 port. In Nautilus or Konqueror you have read/write access to the public shared folder via a WebDAV URL -- for example dav://192.168.1.33:8080/. Air Sharing allows you to set a password to the shared directories. It can display hidden files, and it constantly shows you the remaining free disk space at the bottom of the screen.

Remote control

Since the iPhone offers connectivity either by Wi-Fi or 3G, it's no wonder it can be used to check on your servers while on the road. pTerm is a small iPhone application that offers a simple but useful terminal for remote connections. You can predefine a connection and choose one of the three available connection types: SSH, Telnet, or Raw TCP. Enter a nickname for the saved connection, a hostname and a port, then launch the saved entry to access your SSH or Telnet server. You can input commands by using the standard iPhone software keyboard.

A similar application is TN5250 Lite, a terminal emulator for the IBM iSeries midrange server. It supports SSL, zoom and scroll by using your fingers, autologin, different iSeries configurations, and customizable colors. TouchTerm is also free and includes support for Ctrl, Esc, Tab, and arrow keys. If you want to go SSH-specific, try iSSH. It's only a client application and does not support SCP file transfers, but it compensates with a transparent keyboard. Mocha Telnet focuses on establishing Telnet-only connections with machines that run the service.

If you'd rather use VNC to administer a desktop, try the free Mocha VNC Lite. It has virtual keyboard and mouse support, 8- and 32-bit color modes, features a landscape mode, and works with RealVNC, TightVNC, UltraVNC, and x11vnc configurations running as hosts. Jaadu VNC is a commercial application that features the same options, but it's more eye-pleasing, and supports an inverted mouse and various key combinations that can be sent to the remote desktop.

The Linux-oriented iPhone application market is not a blooming one, but after all, the AppStore itself is rather young. Until you'll be able to sync your iPhone and iPod Touch music with Linux, some of these applications might help you make the most of the two platforms.

Qt Twitter Linux is a barebones KDE client developed with Qt and C++. Since it was built using Twitter's APIs, messages sent via this tool appear instantaneously in Twitter's timeline as if they were sent directly from the Web-based interface (all Tweets show what app the sender uses by default)

At the core of PlayOnLinux is Wine, a compatibility layer that lets you run many Windows programs over Linux. But Wine isn't always easy to use. I

By Andrew Min

Linux is sometimes belittled for having inferior applications, but that's simply not the case. Take DVD rippers, for example -- a plethora of them work on Linux machines. With so many to choose from, which is the best?

I performed three tests on five programs: HandBrakeGTK, AcidRip, dvd::rip, Thoggen, and VLC. The first test ripped a minute-long bonus feature (Yoda and some clones rapping) from the commercial Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith DVD (I am a geek). I performed the second test with the same scene, but with libdvdcss2 (a DVD decryption program) installed. I performed the third test with a nonencrypted DVD that I burned myself (Breakdown, which is about 46 seconds long and available on the Brickfilms site. I used a Dell Dimension 4700 with 1GB of RAM and Kubuntu Gutsy 7.10, running as few other programs as possible. The output was (ideally) MP4 with H.264 compression at 30 frames per second (FPS) (dvd::rip did it in Xvid, AcidRip in lavc, Thoggen in Ogg Theora).

HandBrake and HandBrakeGTK

HandBrake, originally a BeOS DVD ripper licensed under the General Public License (GPL), gained popularity as a Mac app and was praised for its ease of use and power. About a year ago, developers created a fork known as MediaFork to add Windows and Linux ports. In March 2007 the two merged, and in April, HandBrake 0.8.5b1 was released with Windows, Macintosh, and Linux ports. Unfortunately, there's still no official Linux GUI (although there are rumors of a Qt-based GUI). That meant that for a long time, Linux users who weren't familiar with the command line couldn't use HandBrake. (We detailed how to use it in "CLI Magic: Porting DVDs with HandBrake"). Luckily, Jeffrey Kirk created a GTK-based GUI known as HandBrakeGTK.

HandBrakeGTK is definitely not one of the fastest rippers available. In fact, it was the slowest in almost every category. However, it and Thoggen are the only ones that sucessfully ripped the encrypted DVD without libdvdcss2. It also offers a ton of features. You can choose exactly which titles and chapters to rip, use presets, and much more. So if you don't care how slow it is as long as it just works, HandBrakeGTK is for you.

AcidRip

AcidRip, a powerful GTK2 interface to MEncoder, is one of the most feature-heavy rippers around. It includes lots of powerful utilities.

Rather disappointingly, AcidRip didn't rip the encrypted DVD with or without libdvdcss2. That's a real shame, because AcidRip has so much to offer. Its main strength is its overwhelming amount of features, though when you have a lot of features, it's easy to get confused. And since it can sucessfully rip only nonencrypted DVDs, AcidRip may not be for you.

dvd::rip

dvd::rip may not have the most original name, but it deserves attention. It is, after all, one of the oldest and most well-known DVD ripping programs out there.

Like AcidRip, dvd::rip has tons of powerful features, such as projects, cluster control, and much more. This makes dvd::rip perfect for the power user, but leaves the basic user out in the cold. Additionally, dvd::rip couldn't rip the encrypted DVD without libdvdcss2 (though when it had libdvdcss2, it was the fastest). But if you don't mind installing libdvdcss2 and you consider the overwhelming amount of features good rather than bad, dvd::rip is right for you.

Thoggen

If you dislike AcidRip and dvd::rip for being too confusing, check out Thoggen. It offers almost no features at all. All it lets you do is select the titles to rip, and then rips them to Ogg format.

Thoggen and HandBrakeGTK were the only apps to sucessfully rip the encrypted and the nonencrypted DVD. However, the encrypted DVD took a whopping 11 mintues without libdvdcss2 (with, it took a respectable 2:20). Still, if you're a basic user who's not comfortable with complicated GUIs, Thoggen's your best bet.

VLC

VLC -- the media player that can play any format, encode anything, stream media, and wash dishes -- can also rip DVDs. Unfortunately, it's not the easiest task in the world to get it to do so -- check out this article on how to rip DVDs with VLC.

VLC's performance was pretty disappointing with the encrypted DVDs. Although libdvdcss2 was created by VideoLAN (the developers of VLC), VLC couldn't rip the commercial DVD. However, it was hands down the best for ripping nonencrypted DVDs, clocking in at the fastest speed by far. If you are going to be ripping only nonencrypted DVDs and don't mind the advanced configuration required, VLC is right for you.

The best one

Each DVD ripper has its strengths and weaknesses. If you want to use a ripper without libdvdcss2 (which has questionable legality in some countries), HandBrake is your only option. If you don't mind installing the extra library, dvd::rip (for hard-core users) and Thoggen (for basic users) are the best options. And if you're just ripping old DVDs you burned yourself, give the speedy VLC or the powerful AcidRip a try.